DMi Partners Blog

Best Practices for Migrating an Affiliate Program to Impact.com

Zach Labenberg — 2026-05-07T10:01:35+00:00

Migrating affiliate platforms is one of the most operationally demanding projects in program management. Common motivators include cost efficiency, improved reporting and attribution, more flexible commissioning, and access to a broader publisher base. In some cases, it’s simply that the current platform can no longer support the program’s growth.

Impact.com has become a go-to destination for brands making this move, thanks to its advanced tracking, automation, and commissioning capabilities. Here are some best practices, tips, and insights to ensure a smooth transition.

What to Confirm Before Migration Begins

Before the work kicks off, align internally on three key areas to avoid surprises mid-migration:

Reporting & Attribution

Impact offers cross-channel visibility and commission de-duplication across channels like email, SMS, or paid media through its Optimize platform. If eliminating commission waste is a priority, that capability alone can justify the migration.

Commissioning Flexibility

Most major networks, including Impact, support dynamic commissions and customizable commission structures, but the depth varies by provider. Confirm your needs around:

SKU-level commissions
New vs. returning customer logic
Partner-specific cookie windows

International Publisher Access

Not all platforms support international publishers equally. Impact supports international publishers across a wide range of markets, making it a strong choice for brands with global programs or international growth goals.

The Migration Timeline

A well-run migration moves through three distinct phases:

Aggregate publisher list for migration and send to Impact to be scrubbed
Build publisher migration tracker + assign priority by partner
Outline all network copy including, but not limited to, marketplace profile, bio, automatic email responders, publisher text links, network sign-up page, migration messaging, etc.
Outline all publisher template T&Cs
List all publisher groups
Pull direct Content partner links

Implement approved copy, as well as upload logos, banner creative, and info for sign-up page
Set up all template T&Cs
Create publisher groups
Tech team to begin implementing tracking

Status of migration will be updated regularly within a shared Migration Tracker
Align on communicated deadline for publishers to move
We recommend giving publishers 4 weeks notice - once at the 4-week point, we recommend sending a NL within the existing network and moving commission to 0%

In terms of overall calendar time, most migrations take roughly 9-12 weeks.

Partner Outreach & Prioritization

Not all partners need to be treated the same way during a migration. Triage your publisher list early and build your outreach strategy around these tiers:

High

Revenue-active partners. These get dedicated, personal outreach first, and should be your team’s primary focus for the first 4-6 weeks. The goal is 100% migration of this tier.

Medium

Click-active partners and high-quality non-actives (well-known publishers, recently joined but not yet generating revenue). These get dedicated outreach but at a lower urgency level.

Low

Non-active partners that still warrant outreach. These are typically identified by reviewing the partner list manually and flagging any publishers worth bringing over even if they haven’t been driving volume.

Note: Outreach should be sent in multiple rounds with a minimum of three touches per partner as a reasonable baseline. After two rounds with no response from a high-priority partner, it’s worth escalating to senior account management.

Influencer Programs: A Special Case

Influencers frequently promote brands through vanity codes rather than tracked links. Even if they have no links to update, they still need to join Impact for their codes to track properly. Export your existing vanity code list from the current network and upload it to Impact immediately at the start of migration. Proactively explain why joining the new platform is required and what they risk (missed commissions) if they don’t migrate. Define and communicate a hard deadline, and enforce it.

Risks & Rewards: Set Expectations

Potential Risks

Temporary drop in active partner count
Revenue gap during transition window
Slow-moving partners causing link breakage
Commissioning nuances not configured in time
Influencer code tracking gaps
Reporting discrepancies between old and new network

Potential Rewards

Lower network cost as % of revenue
Improved ROAS through commission de-duplication
Better partner mix (strategic vs. discount-heavy)
More granular attribution and reporting
Access to publishers not available on old platform
Stronger commissioning flexibility long-term

Migrations involve short-term disruption but long-term upside. Align stakeholders early on the following:

Network Contracts

Watch auto-renewals. Many contracts renew on fixed dates but require 60-90 days’ notice to cancel.
Check non-circumvention clauses. These may restrict outreach to publishers until the current program is fully closed.
Understand breach terms. Inactive or non-compliant programs can sometimes be shut down without notice.

Publisher Migration

Expect added costs. Some publishers charge migration fees.
Plan for partial adoption. Typically, only 50-70% of partners migrate within the first four weeks.
Verify tracking. A partner saying they’ve migrated doesn’t mean links are working.
Run both programs concurrently during the transition. Do not remove the old program’s pixel until the majority of publishers have confirmed migration to Impact.com. Cutting off the old program too early is one of the most common causes of tracking loss during a migration.

Impact.com Setup

Configure commissions upfront. Set rules (codes, customer types, cookie windows) before partners join.
Align reporting early. If you run domestic and international programs, ensure consistent reporting before launch.
Secure vanity codes immediately. Export and upload influencer codes at the start to avoid lost attribution.

Timing Your Migration

Avoid Q4 entirely if possible. We recommend migrating between January and September. Starting in Q4, many publishers enter freezes where they won’t add new tracking, support migrations, or may charge additional fees to do so.
Work around your brand’s key moments. Friends & Family sales, new product launches, major promotional periods, or any other high-stakes moment is the wrong time to be mid-migration. Map out your brand calendar before locking in a start date and build your timeline around it.

A successful migration to Impact.com is an opportunity to reset your program with better infrastructure, a stronger partner network, and smarter commissioning from the ground up. If you treat the transition as a strategic opportunity, paired with the right preparation and the right team, your program can hit the ground running on day one.

Thinking About Migrating Your Affiliate Program to Impact.com?

DMi Partners is an Impact Elite Partner, and we’ve been working closely with the platform for several years. That relationship means we know the platform deeply: how it’s built, where the nuances are, and how to configure it so your program performs from day one rather than after months of troubleshooting.

Our team has managed migrations for multi-million-dollar affiliate programs and understands what it takes to protect performance through a transition. If you’re considering a move to Impact.com, we’d be happy to talk through what it would look like for your program.

How to Get Your Brand Discovered by AI: What Our Latest Research Shows

DMi Team — 2026-05-07T10:01:35+00:00

The way people find and buy products has changed while most brand marketing strategies haven’t. DMi Partners’ new 2026 research report, Winning in the LLM Era: The Affiliate’s New Playbook, breaks down how AI search and LLM visibility are reshaping brand discovery, and what brands can do about it.

We analyzed over 1.96 million AI search sessions and data from 200+ brands. Here’s what we found.

Consumers Are Already Using AI to Search and Shop

Younger shoppers, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, are opening ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini before they ever type in a traditional search query.

74% of U.S. consumers have used AI tools to discover, compare, or buy products in the last six months
42% of U.S. and European consumers now start their online research with an AI assistant, nearly double last year
AI referral traffic to U.S. retail sites surged 4,700% year-over-year as of mid-2025 (Adobe Analytics)

Those AI-generated answers are shaping purchase decisions before a consumer does their own independent research.

AI Isn’t Citing Your Website. It’s Citing Everyone Else’s.

85% of brand mentions in AI-generated answers come from third-party pages, not a brand’s own site. LLMs are built to trust independent sources over owned content.

AI search tools systematically favor outside consensus. Review articles, expert roundups, comparison guides, and media coverage are now essential for LLM visibility.

Here’s the counterintuitive part: nearly 90% of ChatGPT citations come from pages ranked position 21 or lower in traditional Google results. AI citation potential and Google ranking are not the same, and that’s a significant opportunity for brands willing to think beyond conventional SEO. Adding LLM visibility to your SEO strategy is now a modern-day requirement if you want to be discovered by shoppers.

Key Findings for Brands Trying to Win in the LLM Era

AI-referred traffic converts at dramatically higher rates. Users arriving from AI platforms have already been pre-qualified by the recommendation. They arrive knowing what they want and why.
Over 65% of content cited by leading AI models contains affiliate links or is sponsored. Affiliate publishers are already the dominant voices inside LLM responses.
Content freshness is an LLM visibility signal. Pages updated within the last 30 days earn 3.2x more AI citations than outdated ones. Regular refreshes are essential to maintain relevancy.
The window is still open for early adopters. Most brands haven’t updated their affiliate content standards or measurement frameworks for the AI era yet. Those who act now will build AI citation footprints that are hard for latecomers to displace.

Get Early Access to the Full Report

The complete 2026 research report on AI search visibility and affiliate strategy is coming soon. Contact us to request early access to the full PDF report.

Gamification: Email's AI Antidote

Olivia Tate — 2026-04-21T10:01:35+00:00

In a landscape where AI is summarizing emails before subscribers even open them, email gamification offers something no algorithm can compress: a reason to actually click.

What Is Email Gamification?

Gamification (pronounced Game-ification) is a way to apply interactivity and fun to marketing tactics. In email marketing, this means transforming a static promotional message into something subscribers can participate in.

Rather than sending an email that gets read (or worse, skipped), gamified email campaigns create experiences. A subscriber doesn’t just see your offer. They uncover it, earn it, or play for it. That framing changes the way they engage and leaves a lasting impression.

Why Email Gamification Works Right Now

With AI-powered inbox tools like Gmail’s Gemini integration and Apple Intelligence in iOS 18’s Mail app automatically generating summaries and new preview experiences, traditional promotional emails are getting compressed into a single sentence before a subscriber ever sees them.

Gamified elements create interactive moments that give readers something AI simply can’t compress into a summary. When the email itself is the interaction, skipping it means missing out on an experience. Which can entice subscribers to open your email and engage with it.

Beyond inbox AI, gamification addresses a challenge marketers have always faced: email fatigue. If your campaigns feel formulaic, email gamification shakes things up without requiring you to reinvent your offer or your messaging goals. It creates curiosity and helps encourage subscribers to find out what’s on the other side of a click.

Five Formats to Consider for Your Gamification Email Marketing

Gamification isn’t one-size-fits-all. The right format depends on your audience and your offer. Here’s a breakdown of five common formats, what they’re best for, and what to watch out for:

Spinning Wheel

Best for promotions with variable discounts. Think 10%-30% off or mystery offers. Spinning wheels work because they leverage anticipation and randomness, giving the experience high perceived value. Even a smaller discount feels exciting when it’s been “won.” The watchout: they can attract discount-driven shoppers rather than building long-term loyalty.

Click to Reveal

Best for product drops, exclusive offers, or campaigns where click engagement is a primary KPI. The format works because it creates a curiosity gap and is flexible enough to support personalization (different reveals for different segments). Keep in mind that it’s less of a traditional game format, so it requires strong teaser copy to actually drive the click.

Quiz/Survey

Best for personalization strategies, welcome journeys, or any campaign where learning more about your subscriber adds value. Quizzes work because they make the subscriber feel heard and deliver a more tailored experience. The tradeoff is effort. They ask more of the user, so there needs to be a clear payoff like results, recommendations, or a reward waiting on the other side.

Scratch-Off

Best for VIP moments and holiday campaigns. Scratch-offs mimic a physical interaction, building suspense before the reward is revealed. It’s a tactile, nostalgic experience that’s hard to replicate with other formats. The watchout is execution complexity: if the element doesn’t load or function properly, the frustration can undermine the entire experience.

Riddle

Best for brands with a witty, intellectual, or playful voice, particularly in content-driven emails. Riddles engage the brain rather than just the impulse, and done well, they can create community-building moments around a shared challenge. They’re not universally appealing though, and there’s a real risk of confusion if the riddle is too difficult. Tight alignment with brand voice is essential for this one to feel natural rather than forced.

The Great Wolf Lodge Case Study

Our hospitality and entertainment client, Great Wolf Lodge, wanted to stand out during Cyber Week, a notoriously competitive period when inboxes are flooded with promotions and attention is scarce. The team launched an A/B test to find out whether mystery could outperform transparency.

One group of subscribers received a straightforward email that called out the promotion directly. The other received a “click to reveal” version that teased the offer without disclosing it. Same promotion. Same send time. Very different results.

The mystery version won decisively. Click-through rate increased by 80%, reservation rate increased by 6%, and revenue increased by 5%. An 80% lift in click-through rate is the kind of result that doesn’t just validate a tactic, it reframes the entire approach to promotional email. The offer wasn’t better. The curiosity gap was.

Email Gamification Best Practices

Choose the right moment, and don’t overuse it.

Gamification loses its power when it becomes expected. Be strategic around key seasonal moments, high-stakes promotions, or holiday campaigns where novelty will have the greatest impact.

Keep load times fast.

The interactive element should support the message, not impede it. If a subscriber can’t “play the game” because of a slow load or a rendering failure, the campaign doesn’t succeed. Test across clients and devices before sending.

Make the reward immediately clear.

Always communicate what subscribers are playing for. The prospect of a specific, compelling prize is what drives participation while vague mystery without a clear payoff creates frustration, not excitement.

The Takeaway

Email gamification is a response to a real problem. When inboxes are noisy, AI is skimming on behalf of your subscribers, and promotional fatigue is at an all-time high, standing out has never been harder. Time is a very valuable resource, and brands that get attention are the ones offering something worth spending time interacting with.

An 80% lift in click-through rate started with one test. Find out what a curiosity-driven campaign could do for yours.

Explore Our Email Capabilities

Is Your Email Agency Worth the Fees?

Kevin Dugan — 2026-02-27T10:01:35+00:00

Email marketing may be one of the oldest digital marketing channels, but proving its value - and determining your potential agency’s role in maximizing it - has never been an easy task. When you’re investing in both the channel and an agency to manage it, the real question becomes: is the expertise you’re paying for truly driving results?

The key performance indicators for email marketing are less easily ascribed value than, say, ecommerce conversions, and channel costs aren’t as consistent as “average CPA” is for paid search marketing or “fixed commission rates” are for affiliate marketing. Add an agency’s fees on top of that, and brand marketers often face an uphill battle convincing stakeholders of the value in fully investing in email marketing expertise.

In this post, we’ll help you calculate the value of your email marketing campaigns – and share considerations we encourage brand marketers to take when assessing whether to run email marketing campaigns themselves or work with an external partner.

How to calculate the ROI of email marketing campaigns

The goal of all digital marketing initiatives is to generate loyal customers who return for multiple transactions. But this goal comes into focus even more with email marketing, given the nature of email and its strength in developing long-term relationships with subscribers.

To calculate ROI for your email marketing efforts, focus on key metrics like Lifetime Value at the subscriber level, which isn’t as common to measure across other marketing channels. At the same time, we encourage you to assess leading indicators of success like open rate, click rate, and deliverability.

Unlike other channels, the costs of email marketing can vary, and its value extends far beyond a single user transaction. However, when ROI is calculated – especially with an agency that uses smart campaign strategies and top-tier automated journeys or triggered messages – it’s almost always overwhelmingly positive.

How to assess the value of your email marketing when there’s no direct connection to revenue

Take the total revenue of a specific campaign, triggered message, or journey and work backward to arrive at metrics like revenue per open, revenue per click, and revenue per email delivered. This can be valuable for brands that have costs associated with their sending volume. For brands that pay a flat fee for their email platform, the more controlled costs can create a clearer picture of the ROI and total incremental value being created.

How to calculate the value of new-user acquisition in CRM marketing

It’s important for brands to understand that a new-to-file customer doesn’t hold any inherent value. It takes further marketing to build recurring loyalty from that customer to create the actual value.

While there are clear costs associated with acquiring new customers, it’s crucial for your analytics and reporting teams to provide visibility into the revenue generated from the new records added to your database. Without this data, it’s much harder to optimize campaigns effectively. By closing the loop and tracking new customers back to the revenue they generate, you can identify the right levers to pull and maximize your ROI.

Should you hire an email marketing agency or keep things in-house?

An email marketing agency can often deliver immediate value by uncovering opportunities you might not have tapped into yet. Expanding personalization and implementing automated journeys, for example, are two proven strategies that can significantly boost campaign performance. When agencies find quick wins like these, they often help generate returns that more than justify your brand’s investment.

Another important consideration when evaluating whether to bring on an agency is the potential cost savings compared to hiring in-house experts. While agency fees may seem like an added expense at first glance, they can often offset the costs of building and maintaining an internal team. When assessing your options, think about how partnering with an agency could streamline your resources and reduce long-term expenses.

By asking the right questions, your brand can determine whether email marketing is the right channel for your goals and if partnering with an agency is the smart move to maximize its potential. If you’re ready to explore how an experienced agency can elevate your email strategy, we’d love to hear from you. You don’t need to sign any contracts to pick our brains about email marketing strategy, of course; we’re happy to jump on a call and provide insights on your brand’s specific growth opportunities anytime. Drop us a line at info@dmipartners.com to start the conversation.

6 Questions to Determine Whether an Agency Is the Right Fit for Your Brand

Zach Labenberg — 2026-02-24T10:01:35+00:00

We’ve won and lost our share of clients in the pitch process over the years, and I can say with confidence that the best decisions that lead to the longest partnerships don’t come down to which agency is the best (which is almost impossible to determine) but come down to which agency is the best fit for your brand.

At DMi Partners, we anticipate the questions brand will (and should!) ask in the RFP process. Whether brands ask these questions or not, we proactively address them to guide brands towards making a better decision. Our approach to client service is designed to align with the answers that define a truly great partnership.

Here are some of the key questions your brand should consider:

Is the agency aligned with our business goals?
What kind of brand experience does the agency have with similar goals and growth challenges?
Will the agency be flexible as my brand’s business challenges and goals evolve?
Does the agency have good team continuity?
Will the agency be worth its fees?
What intangibles can the agency offer that will make it a great partner?

You should ask these questions when evaluating potential partners to ensure the agency’s marketing framework aligns with your needs, from the initial RFP process through the entire engagement.

1. Is the agency aligned with our business goals?

First, an agency needs to be thorough in establishing an understanding of the business goals you’re looking to address within the partnership (more on that in a bit). From there, don’t accept staffing and forecasting projections at face value without asking follow-ups questions like:

How will each resource be working to address our business goals?
What kind of process and methodology are the agency’s forecasts built on?
How is each channel in scope projected to help meet or exceed our business goals?
And what kind of reporting can we expect to see to make sure our goals are always the focus of each initiative?

Dive deeper into the agency’s approach to uncover and address any potential weaknesses in executing strategy.

2. What kind of brand experience does the agency have with similar goals and growth challenges?

Most brands ask about experience in their vertical, but while that can be important, we’ve learned throughout our 23 years in business that the more relevant question is whether the agency has a good track record solving similar challenges facing brands at similar stages of maturity.

For example, an agency that has successfully built a full-funnel affiliate program to accelerate customer acquisition is a far more capable partner for a fashion brand with that specific performance goal than an agency with numerous fashion case studies but no proven track record in meeting that goal.

Therefore, prioritize evaluating an agency’s proven ability to solve your specific business challenges, as this is a far more accurate predictor of a successful partnership than industry experience alone.

3. Will the agency be flexible as my brand’s business challenges and goals evolve?

You can get a good read on this right from the RFP process. An agency willing to adapt its fee structures, staffing resources, and scope if needed as the RFP process evolves gives you the best signal that it will be willing and able to adapt with you over the course of an engagement.

4. Does the agency have good team continuity?

One common reason brands leave their agencies is out of frustration with team turnover; it’s a thankless task to re-educate new teams frequently on business goals, strengths, and weaknesses.

There are several ways brands can research an agency’s turnover – Glassdoor is probably the most popular. But make sure your brand pays attention to secondary elements like culture pages, awards, and LinkedIn engagement from team members. Many agencies can sound great on their own website, but that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily living up to their values from the top down.

At DMi Partners, when we apply for workforce-based awards, we pick the ones based entirely on surveys distributed to the team. Our track record with AdAge, Inc.com, Gallup, and the Philly Inquirer is one that we’re very proud of, since they’re determined on feedback from our team members.

5. Will the agency be worth its fees?

You’ll never truly know if an agency is worth their fee until the engagement is underway, but you can and should ask questions that dig deeper into KPIs like CPA and revenue. Net-new customers tend to be much more valuable (and expensive) than repeat customers, so ask about the ratio of new customers whenever an agency doesn’t volunteer that information.

Ditto incrementality – if an agency can tell you how much incremental growth they drove (not just the revenue it drove), that’s a good sign that it will be worth the fees they’re charging.

6. What intangibles can the agency offer that will make it a great partner?

This question can be broken down into a series of smaller, more specific questions:

Does the agency offer proactive recommendations that go beyond the questions in RFP?
Does the agency describe the process it takes to get the results it cites to try to win your business?
Does the agency ask questions that help it get a better understanding of your goals and challenges?
Does the agency explain how its recommendations will address your business goals?
“Yes” answers to all these questions indicate the agency has strong qualities that bode well for a long, fruitful partnership.

You’ll notice that these questions aren’t necessarily weighted towards the biggest, best-known agencies, and there’s good reason for that. Bigger agencies might seem to carry less risk (kind of like the “no one ever got fired for buying IBM” analogy), but that’s not the same as being the best fit for a particular brand with unique goals and challenges.

If you’re ready to partner with an agency that anticipates your needs, answers the questions you didn’t even know to ask, and delivers results that exceed expectations, we’d love to hear from you. Drop us a line at info@dmipartners.com to start the conversation – no pressure, just straight talk and solutions tailored to your brand’s goals.

Gemini Comes to the GMail Inbox: What to Know

Lauren McGrath — 2026-02-24T10:01:35+00:00

Email marketers who haven’t heavily prioritized improving deliverability, relevance, and the user experience should be very motivated to change that ASAP.

Why?

As an early-January announcement from Google plainly and precisely states, Gmail is entering its Gemini era.

Given Google’s broad push into AI, the incorporation of functions from Gemini, its AI-powered assistant, comes as no surprise. But it does introduce some changes to the inbox experience in both obvious and subtle ways that signal even greater stakes for email marketers to nail a few fundamentals of the trade.

In this post, I’ll look at some of the ways Gemini is changing the inbox, what the near-term significance for engagement and visibility looks like, and how I see long-term effects rolling out over the coming months and years.

Before I dig in here on what’s actually changing, a couple of important notes on the scope of this rollout:

Although Apple is also using Gemini 3 for its AI tools, they’re not (yet) available directly in Apple Mail
Gemini features are, however, available in the Gmail app on iPhones and iPads
Some of these features are being tested right now before they roll out more broadly

Now then…

What changes is Gemini bringing to Gmail?

Gemini is producing the following features for all users (note: users do not have to use these features and are able to write and respond to emails as they choose):

Conversation summaries. When you open an email with dozens of replies, Gmail synthesizes the entire conversation into a concise summary of key points
Help Me Write can be used to polish emails or draft them from scratch (expected this month: an updated Help Me Write feature that integrates context from your other Google apps to improve personalization)
Suggested replies that use the context of your conversation to provide relevant, one-click responses that match how you write
Prioritization of your VIPs based on signals like people you email frequently, those in your contacts list, and relationships Gmail infers from message content

As noted, the ability to ask your inbox questions with AI Overviews is only available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

AI inbox is in testing right now and will be available more broadly in the coming months – though it’s unclear if that will be available to all users or only paid subscribers. It will render in a separate tab like this:

How might these updates affect engagement and visibility in the near term?

One effect of these updates is that AI is scanning and interpreting emails before the user does. Similar to the way iOS 18 impacted performance, we anticipate that there will be a decrease in email visibility in the inbox.

While it’s unclear how many of Gmail’s 3 billion users will have access to AI inbox, which will primarily include conversations and important update emails like bill reminders and likely won’t feature promotional content, I don’t expect this feature to make a huge difference in performance numbers. Gmail already boosts subscriber-specific relevant emails in the promotions tab.

That said, Gmail now shows promotional emails in order of relevance, not recency. Google hasn’t revealed exactly how it determines what’s ‘most relevant,’ but it is likely based on a combination of engagement (how users engage and how often) and content features like discounts and exclusivity language. In other words, email marketers who lead with a deeper understanding of users will gain ground even more quickly now that Gmail is sorting by relevance.

What do these changes signify over the long term?

No matter how tech-forward the updates, Gmail continues to prioritize user experience, which is a trend I think will only continue. I also predict we’ll see more tools and functionality that surface promotional emails based on user engagement – potentially including engagement with emails from competing brands – as the AI learns what types of content and products you interact with most.

Deliverability, which I mentioned earlier in the post, will also become even more critical as Gmail rewards entities that follow bulk-sender requirements. And little visual markers (like BIMI and Annotations) that help emails stand out in the inbox will become more of a necessity than an option.

In other words, the strategies that we know work – deliverability, relevance, and personalized user experience – will continue to work and keep your brand in good competitive stead, even as AI creeps further into the inbox. Test and measure everything you can, but don’t let the bells, whistles, and new features distract you from what’s most important to the user and the spam guidelines.

We’re happy to talk shop about email best practices anytime. Hit us up at info@dmipartners.com.